9 comments:

I remember those FF covers from the early issues of The Complete Fantastic Four in autumn 1977 , it was my first term at comprehensive school. If I recall correctly the Swordsman was French and he used to say things like " zut alors " and "sacre bleu " all the time although not on that cover.The X Men story was a reprint of an earlier story I think , those were the final days of the boring original X Men before their shiny new relaunch.

The X Men tale is from X-men 35 by Thomas/Roth. Far from the best of the original run but far from the worst. One of Spider-Mans regular bump-into-another-superhero-have-misunderstanding-and-fight stories.

A tale that makes the descision to relaunch the title less than 18 months later even more strange.

As for Medusa in FF she is just following in Sue's footsteps.

The Conan storyhad Conan chancing upon a Castle/temple/cave/sanctum and finding an evil priest/wizard/sourceror/God along with a slavegirl/princess/Queen/female barbarian who needs rescuing/seeks revenge/is in league with the bad guy. Everyone dies except/including the girl character and Conan walks off at the end... probably....

Colin, I think it was Batroc the Leaper (Batroc ze Leapair) who used to have the comedy French accent - although I'm not familiar with the Swordsman's very early adventures, so maybe he did it too in those early days.

Aggy, you're right. I'd forgotten about Sue Storm's contribution to the cover of issue #1 and the giant-hand battling precedent she'd set with it.

Ye gods, that observation about the Falcon retaining his own hair after his transformation completely slipped by me. Maybe Nightshade just wanted to put her own personal stamp on her serum, to distinguish her from other mad scientists.

Steve, I'd completely forgotten about Batroc the Leaper- how the memory plays tricks. I read your recent post about Aunt May being way too old for Peter's aunt. I think you've said you don't read the modern comics ( I buy them now and again to keep a hand in) so you might not know that the modern Aunt May seems younger with a more flattering hairstyle- she's very different from the dithering, emaciated old crone of the '70s. Perhaps somebody at Marvel noticed the same thing as you !

Peter caught Aunt May in bed with J. Jonah Jameson's father in Amazing Spider-Man #592 in 2009. In the 2003 mini-series "Trouble," a young May had a fling with Richard Parker and got pregnant, and it was strongly implied that she was Peter's real mother. To which I say, in both cases: Yuck. And, as far as I remember, the Swordsman never had a noticeable accent. I think his first appearance was in the Avengers' Kooky Quartet era in the mid-1960's, and flashbacks revealed that he was Hawkeye's arch rival or something (they had been performers in the same circus or carnival). Pretty sure it was "Batroc ze, 'ow you zay, leapair" with the Pepe LePew accent.

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I inflicted the novels "Danny Yates Must Die" and "Mr Landen Has No Brain" on the world, as well as a bunch of short stories under a bunch of pseudonyms.
I also run the blogs "Steve Does Comics" and "Steve Does Dr Who".
My latest novel - "Fatal Inheritance" - is out now on Amazon Kindle. If you like women fighting the forces of evil, it's the book for you.